Crown of Crimson Read online

  The Swordmaster takes my provocation in stride. He tosses his sword to Jamas, who barely looks up to catch it by the hilt. Unclipping my chains from the horse, he sets me free. A dagger is taken from the Swordmaster’s belt before he takes a step forward, as if expecting me to strike first. He should know better than to assume I am ill trained enough to strike the first blow.

  Livingstone’s swordsmen all gather around, watching the two of us. I won’t hesitate to fight dirty, and I hope the Swordmaster knows that. Although, I wouldn’t put it past him to fight dirty either. He did slaughter a village of women and children. I’ve killed a great many people in my short life but never have I assassinated a child. And he also has conveniently left me chained for our duel. How very Evrallonic of him.

  After a minute of stillness, I finally get annoyed with the lack of action and barely step forward, provoking the Swordmaster into fighting. He steps up, falling prey to my tactic, and swings the blade towards my head. I watch his movements, study his strengths and weaknesses, all in the two seconds it takes for me to raise my own dagger, meeting him halfway. But in those two seconds, I see something I wish I hadn’t.

  Invulnerability.

  My dagger clashes against his and my heart leaps into my throat. Being this close to him, staring into endless eyes of cold waters, I see no weakness — I see no soul.

  I feel more than see Lyom Livingstone’s foot between my own but am unable to react before he sweeps me off my feet. As the trained assassin I am, I roll back onto my back and flip over backwards, landing on my feet without so much as a scratch. In the darkness it’s hard to see the Swordmaster’s expression but knowing him I’d be willing to bet he is mildly indifferent to my evasion.

  We both meet in the middle, clashing metal daggers and arms tangling up. I step my foot around him and use my fist and elbow to drive him backwards. Before he falls he grabs my arm and the back of my neck, pulling me down with him. He hits the ground first and rolls, using my own move. By the time he’s stopped rolling, he’s pinned me beneath him. I keep my hips lifted from the hard, cold dirt beneath me and pivot, using my elbows to break his hold on me.

  In my escape from beneath the Swordmaster, I bring my knee up into his groin, momentarily paralyzing him. He recovers remarkably quickly and to my annoyance is already getting to his feet. In response I leap onto his back and hook my legs around his arms, effectively putting him in a headlock with my own arms. I hear swords unsheathe and sense movement behind me — Jamas, likely — but before they can intervene, the Swordmaster somehow has me on my back again. It happens so quickly that I almost don’t notice it. My chains wrap around my ankles and tangle me up in metal braces. I struggle beneath him but my hands are bound tightly together by the cuffs and my ankles are the same.

  Swordmaster Livingstone looks down at me with a mixture of annoyance and disgust. Does he have any other expression?

  “You fought dirty.” I accuse.

  The Swordmaster raises a half-curious brow. “As did you.”

  “Yes, but might I remind you that I am an assassin? I am permitted to fight dirty. You are the Swordmaster. You are to fight honorably.” I remind him.

  “If I was honorable,” he hisses. “I would have killed you when I found you in Lydovier. But fortunately for you, I am loyal to my king.”

  He shoves away from me and gets to his feet quickly, believing that my fighting had all been in jest and good fun. “Mount up. We have an hour yet and we have been delayed by the assassin’s foolishness.”

  I level a dangerous glare at him. The Swordmaster picks up the end of my chains to reattach me to his horse but I whip them out of his hands, spinning around and catching them on the ankles of three servicemen. They jump when the metal clashes at their bones and stumble backwards. When Jamas runs at me, I catch his hand before he can use the weapon he holds and twist his arm behind his back, using his momentum to throw him to the ground.

  My reign of destruction is promptly thwarted by the ever-prepared Swordmaster. He grabs my chains and jerks me towards him, throwing me up against the side of his horse, who barely budges. The same dagger I held is brought tight to my neck, malice swirling in the Swordmaster’s glass blue eyes.

  “You must have a death wish.” he growls.

  I tilt my chin down, ignoring the flash of pain at my neck. I was trained for years to show no pain, show no fear, show no mercy. “I am better off dead than serving your king, however he wishes.” I spit.

  Blue eyes shine like fire into my own dull gray eyes and I wonder if we look like stark opposites when placed side by side.

  “That is not your choice to make.” he barks. “Your life belongs to King Dryden. Only he may decide when to kill you.” He shoves away from me, though his eyes still hold firm to mine. “No matter how much inconvenience you cause us or how just a punishment your death may be.”

  I flinch. I shouldn’t, but I do. So much for being trained to show no pain. The Swordmaster does not even know the half of my crimes. I fear that if he did, even a soulless, inhuman man like him would not dare to touch me.

  My chains are clipped to the horse and the Swordmaster sheathes his daggers, taking the offered sword from Jamas and returning it to its scabbard.

  Though I despise myself for doing it, the remainder of the journey I am reduced to a shell, a wandering ghost. I’m dragged along by the Swordmaster and make no attempt to free myself. Something deep down inside screams for me to make my escape, to flee and never look back, to seek revenge against those that betrayed me, but there is another voice in my head as well. It whispers that every accusation Swordmaster Livingstone has made is just. I am the monster he makes me out to be, and I do deserve to pay for my crimes. I just cannot fathom a worse way than serving the Cruel King. Oh, how Quay would be ashamed!

  My feet are bleeding by the time we arrive at the base of Adandyrl but I hardly notice. The chill in the air has only worsened since the sun went down hours ago and temperatures continue to drop. Adandyrl spreads out before us, the village itself laid up against the mountain that Adandyrl’s Keep sits atop.

  The Keep can be seen even from the gates of Adandyrl. Its imposing walls and extravagant windows and doors are the first things one notices about the castle. The walls are pure white and the windows are silver. If I hadn’t already visited Adandyrl on multiple occasions, I would have suspected that the castle was carved from ice.

  Lyom escorts me through the illustrious streets of Adandyrl like an animal. Thankfully, the good citizens of Adandyrl are blissfully unaware of the assassin that walks in their midst. My face — unlike my name — is unknown to the populous. Only a select few know my appearance. Which is a good thing because if the people on the streets knew who I was, they would likely be throwing rotten tomatoes at me — or, rather, rocks.

  Again I am struck with the unnerving feeling that the Cruel King could be aware of my heritage. I have never been good at consoling anyone, least of all myself, so I decide it’s best not to even try dispersing the idea. While it isn’t likely the king knows, it is possible. Apart from Quay, a select few members of my father’s cabinet knew of my parentage and what my father chose to do with me. Any one of them could have escaped Lydovier and offered such information for safe passage into Evrallon.

  We tread up the winding hill that leads to the castle and the Cruel King. The palace towers above us. Lyom pulls the company to a stop and I am finally allowed to rest. I stare up at the castle in all its glory. Doors made of iron stand before us, closed. Engravings crawl across the doors of silver or polished iron, creating numerous symbols. The grand entrance is indeed that. Two more palace guards await us, taking Lyom’s horse when he dismounts. The Swordmaster unclips me from the link on his saddle. He pulls me inside with surprising strength, enough so that I stumble, though I still have the excuse that I am starved and chained.

  Jamas dismounts and follows his Swordmaster inside. I’m dragged through the doorway of the palace before the silver doors close behind me
. My mind carefully considers different maneuvers to free me from my situation but no immediate solution arises. I feel utterly, hopelessly defeated.

  The inside of the Keep is grand, the floors made of polished marble and the ceilings painted with the finest dyes. Illustrations of men and women, angels and demons, war across the ceiling. Fire crackles in the grooves of the guardrails that lead up from the base of the foyer. The stairs themselves are crafted of white marble and the guardrails the same, but they are chiseled intricately. The room is lit by a massive chandelier hanging over the great foyer, something like thirty candles inside. I cannot imagine being the bondservant that has to light those tapers every day.

  The Swordmaster leads me up the stairs, my bare feet cold on the surface of the marble. I’m tempted to turn around to see if I’ve left a trail of bloody footprints but can hardly put one foot in front of the other at this point.

  At the top of the stairs lies another grand hall. Murals of beautiful kings and queens line the walkway. The end of the corridor breaks off into several more halls. I am dragged down the hall to the right, in which we find yet another staircase that leads to a hall of doors. Behind me, as we approach the corridor, I hear Jamas say, “Best of luck this morning, Swordmaster.” before he and the other swordsmen break away from the group.

  Swordmaster Livingstone turns, looking over his shoulder as they leave. I study the Swordmaster, hoping to see any form of emotion, however small it may be. I hope to find some sense of shared trials, loyalty, and brotherhood but find nothing.

  “You will remain here for the evening. When I come to get you, you will get dressed in whatever I have brought.” he commands.

  I raise a weak brow. “Will this be for my execution or for my enlistment into the Cruel King’s service?”

  The Swordmaster’s glare is hostile. “Watch your mouth, Assassin.”

  The Swordmaster stops quickly and I nearly stumble into him. He pushes a door open and casts a hand inside the room, silently commanding me to enter. When I don’t move, Swordmaster Livingstone lets out an annoyed breath but it is the only semblance of an emotion I catch in his eyes. For a brief moment I wonder how someone with such beauty could display such little emotion, how eyes like that could be so hardened. Then I wonder how many of my victims have thought the same of me before they bled out on their polished floors and I cease such wonderings.

  “Why must you make everything difficult?” he says, more to himself than to me. He grabs farther up on my chains and shoves me into the room. I keep my footing well. I don’t turn around when I enter the room. Instead, I admire the rich furnishings. Oh, yes, this room is nothing like the room in My Fair Lady.

  A bed made of dark wood and soft, white and gold linens kisses the back wall, along with windows that have iron bars decoratively placed on the outside. A prison of the worst kind. How many of the Cruel King’s guests have stayed here, visiting the king and the kingdom, not even realizing that they were being kept captive in their own accommodations?

  The washroom to the left looks warm and inviting, a candle already burning inside. How kind of them to light something for me. I am certain great thought was put in by the Swordmaster.

  I turn around, facing said Swordmaster, who wears an impatient black look on his face.

  “Yet another prison.” I note.

  His expression changes not. “Did you expect differently, Assassin?”

  I let his words roll over me and try to sound confident when I say: “No prison, however beautiful, can hold the Queen of Crimson for long.”

  Lyom Livingstone just scowls in return. “Evrallon has no queen.” He takes the key off his belt but before stepping towards me he raises a dark brow. “Will those be necessary?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  Clearly the Swordmaster has had enough of my games because he practically stomps over to me. My cuffs drop into his hand and he’s gone so quickly that the door nearly rattles off the hinges in his wake. It would appear I have finally drawn some sort of emotion out of the young Swordmaster, though it may be an unpleasant one.

  IV

  “Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it … one must have the courage to dare.”

  ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

  My morning consists of wanting to bathe and then deciding that I don’t want to be presentable for the king, then wanting to get the grime and filth off me, then reestablishing my hatred for the Cruel King’s standards. My indecisiveness is only slightly worrying to me. After Lyom left, I’d made it my goal to find a weapon of some sort, and I did. It is small and will not do much damage but it is a weapon, and in my hands, it may as well be a cat of nine tails.

  My weapon is a small splinter of wood I peeled up from beneath my luxurious bed. It is about five inches long and is jagged enough that a piece of it has already splintered into my finger. If presented the opportunity, this skewer will end up through the king’s neck.

  I’ve checked the drawers twice over to see if I can find any likeness of a better weapon but nothing magically appears. Instead the drawers are filled with nightclothes and even a pair of riding attire. In the hanging closet are two simple gowns that a servant girl in Lydovier would have worn. Lying beneath them are two pairs of flat slippers. As much as I would like to get out of my clothes, I would prefer not to make things easy on the Swordmaster.

  By the time noon begins to roll around, my stomach has growled for the millionth time. Hunger gnaws at my insides and for a while I try to push my hunger away by distracting myself.

  Giving in to the call of the washroom, I step inside and strip my clothes off, sinking into the water that was already prepared for me. It has cooled down significantly since I arrived but thanks to the metal tub it sits in, the water is still very warm. I practically melt in, pulling the bars of fragrance in with me. The warm water seeps into my skin and melts my frozen bones. I thought I’d never shake the chill I acquired while standing in the cold in the early morning hours. I run soap over my shoulders and back, feeling the scars that run down my spine, over my shoulder blades. I cannot feel my Jezdah but I know it is there, ever present. Something whispered about in Lydovier courts — something my father feared was magical.

  Despite my comfort, however, I don’t allow myself to forget my situation. Even as I relax into the water, I formulate plans of escape. I map out the Keep as I have seen it thus far, noting the foyer and how many servicemen guarded it, along with the hall of murals and its protection. I am desperately curious of the king’s motives for bringing me here and attempting to piece together the elaborate puzzle without having any of the corner pieces is impossibly difficult.

  Sitting here in the washtub, my mind wanders to my missing companions. Sebastien is dead, but Cicero, Dominik, and Laderic still live. If I have one regret in the world, it will be that I did not see the betrayal of my own companions coming. I stare up at the ceiling, reliving the past months, trying to decide if there were any hints I should have picked up on. How many times did Laderic wink at Sebastien or Dominik when I made mention of our compatibility as a team? How many times did Dominik seem distracted on assignments?

  More than a part of me loathes myself for being lulled into a sense of security. Quay trained all of us, every member of the Cannon throughout the years, to trust no one. He had forewarned us that any one of us could betray the other. I was just naïve and gullible. Sebastien and Cicero are selfish, more selfish than even I was trained to be. Their deception and treachery knows no bounds, and there is no end to their heartlessness, but in this way we are alike.

  Somehow I can imagine Dominik betraying me, if it was for the right reason. Laderic? Never. But Dominik, yes. I had always believed that if there was any one soul in this world I could rely upon, it would be my erstwhile confederate, Dominik. Of course, now I realize how foolish I had been. I marvel in my own gullibility. And that kiss.

  Any other assassin would have seen that coming, could have predicted his dec
eit. How Dominik managed to pull the wool over my eyes, I will never know. I find myself looking back at all the times I saw him doing something suspicious, or the moments when I wondered if someone had sabotaged one of my assignments. All of his sly smiles and triumphant looks. How foolish of me to believe he was mild. Expressionless, emotionless, perhaps, but not mild. The Swordmaster … he is expressionless and emotionless — the two would have gotten along well together. Perhaps that is why Dominik betrayed me — he found a new friend.

  Annoyed with the turn my train of thought has taken, I dip below the warm waters and wash the soap from my hair. I resurface and splash water on my face, hoping to dispel any remaining want to simply do something to get the Swordmaster to put an end to my future miserable life. I will not resort to killing myself; my people deserve better than that. They deserve to have their memories preserved. A part of me wishes I would have told them that I was their princess — their queen, in the end — but a stronger, more powerful voice in me shouts that they would have never accepted who I am.

  At the thought of my fallen kingdom, anger wells up inside of me. I may have had no intentions of claiming the throne at any point, but I was born into it. My father was the king, and now he is dead. Lydovier is just another conquered land Evrallon’s blight of a Swordmaster has vanquished. By now, I would guess it’s being renamed a district of Evrallon, the name Lydovier being forever erased from the land.

  King Dryden must never learn of my parentage. I will be seen as a threat to him, or worse — a prize. To him, I would be the lost princess of Lydovier, this century’s Child of the Elements, and if he does not kill me for the threat I pose, he will exploit me and use me to his advantage.

  He must always suspect that the princess died when she was young, died with her mother, as my father told the people. He must never see me as more than the assassin that I am. Because the Princess Cress no longer exists. I never even knew her given name. Aerietta Elony has nothing to do with the crown of Lydovier, other than her employment.